I concur with this article. Based on my experience with dereg in the early 1990s, this is exactly what we are now seeing. Utilities insist that transmission information is confidential business information and there fore refuse to disclose it. In addition, reliability is second to short-term profits (except that claims of addressing reliability are long and loud whenever it is in the economic interest of the utilities to do so). Long-distance transmission is overloaded, so generators can take advantage of states with lax rules, cheap power, and tax incentives (that's us).
I conclude that, regardless of how many transmission lines we build, the grid will remain loaded to the max, with little margin for error. A serious demand-side management program, with time-of-use metering, would reduce peak demands and the risks of blackouts much better and more cheaply than new transmission capacity ever could. But this would not allow the utilities to maximize profits, and there does not seem to be a way to get the utilities to be serious about DSM until we change the profit incentives unde which they operate.
JBK
"Paul Wilson" pjgrunt@gmail.com 12/12/2008 11:37 AM >>>
fyi, somewhat dated (2003) but good article on grid and grid management. best,paul
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Paul Wilson pjgrunt@gmail.com Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 9:14 AM Subject: Re: What's Wrong With the Grid Article To: Keryn Newman keryn@frontiernet.net
Thanks, Keryn: I got it just fine. There is a link to a PDF version of the article at the top of the page. I will send the link to others in WV Sierra Club.. See you tonight. paul
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:20 PM, Keryn Newman keryn@frontiernet.netwrote:
Here's the link to the article